Another Brooklyn

A Novel

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award--winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years.

Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything--until it wasn't. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant--a part of a future that belonged to them.

But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.

Like Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood--the promise and peril of growing up--and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.

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A story about mothers, loss, memory, and growing up. The novel's language is poetic as is the style. Some chapters dance around, touching on different bits and pieces of the story. Eventually those bits and pieces come together to form a whole picture. At times it was difficult to follow, and as a reader I tend to prefer more linear stories. Still this story was almost musical, and very real.

This is a beautiful book. August and her three closest friends grow up in a vibrant Brooklyn, but there is also the other Brooklyn with criminal activity, teenage pregnancies, abusive parents, troubled veterans, and assault. August’s father tries to shield her and her brother from this, by not letting them out of the apartment. Of course, eventually they have to venture out in the world. This is a beautiful, lyrical book. My only complaint is that it’s sometimes hard to keep track of the time jumps.

What I liked: This was a quick read, and it was very poetically written. It was dream-like and impressionistic.

What I disliked: The main character did not seem to change over the course of the book--she started out sad, she ended up still sad, and she seemed determined to stay sad. The supporting characters lacked dimension and therefore seemed unrealistic.

If you are looking for a book about childhood friendships and loss, I recommend The False Friend by Myla Goldberg over Another Brooklyn.

I was pulled into this story immediately, and it was hard to put it down. Poetic, highly sensory writing. It transported me to 70s Brooklyn, but also felt true to my experience of growing up girl in another time and place. 4 stars instead of 5 because I wanted it to dig deeper--I finished the book with unanswered questions and didn't get a good feeling of closure.

MsDouglas_O
Apr 13, 2017

This book was a great read. J. Woodson has a way of telling you a story and keeping you engaged. Loved it.

I have not been this excited about an author since I first discovered Irvine Welsh. She writes like Charles Bukowski would have if he had never drank, gotten a PhD and was a strong, black woman. In an unprecedented move I bought another JW piece after reading the first page of this novel. It's about time I have a sister in my queue of authors for whom I must read everything they've written. My biggest fear in life besides losing my children is that I will die before I get a chance to finish all my stories.

I love reading prose written by poets, and Another Brooklyn didn't disappoint. This was the most beautifully-written book I read in 2016, and anyone who enjoys lyrical prose should pick it up. It also brought me to tears more than once, as Woodson's narrator considers those events which are too painful to forget, and those that are too painful to remember.